Over the past few years, industrial manufacturing production lines have included an increasing number of automated processes using programmable manipulators or robots. These robots simulate the hand, arm and wrist movements of a machine operator with consistent accuracy and without any risk to operator personal injury or fatigue. A variety of such robots have been proposed and are commercially available in various sizes, specifications and performances. One such commercially available robotic arm is the SEIKO Model 700 pick and place robot manufactured by Seiko Instruments Inc. of Japan. Such a known arm is capable of performing four basic motions usually required in a manufacturing or part assembly process.
In the manufacture of large scale integrated semiconductor devices, it is usually necessary to first form the various circuit elements in a semiconductor wafer and then to cut the processed wafer into a plurality of individual integrated circuit (IC) chips. The latter are, in turn, mounted and assembled in individual packages called chip carriers varying in size, shape and type. Current IC chip mounting processes require the pre-heating of a package and the placing of an Au-P preform in a cavity of the package thereby forming a eutectic bond between the IC chip and the package. Chip protection is typically provided in a lid sealing operation where a gold plated lid is attached to the package. Such a lid sealing operation requires a very accurate positioning of the lid with respect to the chip carrier to achieve a reliable chip protection technique.
As integrated semiconductor IC packages are becoming smaller in size with the demand for such packages having recently substantially increased, the miniaturization of the IC packages renders unattractive any technique using a manual lid sealing operation. Indeed, in a manufacturing environment, such an operation would yield small throughput, would be labor intensive and would cause substantial reliability problems due to operator fatigue. Therefore, there exists a need for an apparatus (e.g., a robotic hand) of the pick and place type capable of accurately and reliably handling articles, in a manufacturing environment, while substantially avoiding the above-discussed difficulties.